5th Ed. Spelljammer – The Wand of Orcus, session 23

After an attempt at evasion, it was clear the Man-O-War intended to confront Sea of Stars. Captain Straxius ordered everyone to battle stations, but did not order an attack, preferring to let the elves, if that’s who they really were, make the first move.

A projection of the Elven captain appeared on their deck. He introduced himself as High Captain Larethon and informed the crew of Sea of Stars that they were in restricted space and demanded to know their purpose.

Captain Straxius explained who they were and that they were ignorant of the restriction on the space above Brintannia. Captain Larethon had heard of a Straxius Farseer, Captain of Boccob’s Barge, a ship currently implicated in a rash of pirate attacks. Straxius explained that ship had been stolen by a lich and his undead minions, then Queen Garria blurted out that they were on a sacred quest to defeat Orcus, much to the chagrin of the superstitious among the crew who believes saying the Demon Prince’s name invited ruin.

Upon hearing this, Captain Larethon invited the officers to convene aboard his ship. Captain Straxius accepted the invitation, but cautioned his crew to be wary of any attempt by the elves to deceive them. The elves served wine, then they got down to business. Straxius explained their quest in detail and the elf explained piracy enacted by ships crewed by the undead were increasing and there were signs that Orcus’s minions were involved. Captain Larethon told them he was authorized to help anyone working against the Demon Prince of Undead and would send word to their armada in The Grinder that they were to share whatever intelligence they had on these attacks, and the whereabouts of the pieces of the Wand of Orcus.

He wished them luck. Captain Straxius bartered a case of wine from him and Sea of Stars parted ways with the Man-O-War with a new destination: Greyspace.

The journey to Greyspace was uneventful and they navigated their way to The Grinder, the vast sphere of asteroids and planetoids surrounding the inner planets of Greyspace. They navigated their way through the tumbling rocks toward the Elven Armada. Passing between two particularly close planetoids, they were attacked by a void worm, a wild space-dwelling cousin of the dreaded purple worm. Fortunately, Captain Straxius had a polymorph spell handy with which he reduced it to a snail, allowing them to pass with minimum damage to the ship*.

After receiving permission to dock, the crew exited Sea of Stars and met with the commander of the Elven Armada, Lord Corellon. Having been forewarned of their arrival, the Elvish Lord had all the information pertaining to various divinations they’d performed regarding the Wand of Orcus as well as information from the Elvish navy’s vast network of spies. They had narrowed the shaft of the wand down to four possible locations. He dismissed the possibility that it was in the hands of the Kingpriest of Istar immediately; both the location and the man were destroyed ages ago. They determined it could be in the possession of a Dwarven collector of rare oddities, Belgar Blisterstone, a resident of the nearby Ironfist Citadel. Another possibly location was in the possession of Keraptis, in his mountain of power. Unfortunately, the mountain moved at seemingly random intervals. It was last known to be on Reorx, in Krynnspace, but Lord Corellon warned it could very well move before they could get there. Lastly, another collector might have it: Seravos the Golden, last known to reside on the Rock of Bral.

When their business with the elves was complete, they set off for the first of their possibilities: Ironfist Citadel. They found the Dwarven citadel in the Grinder, less than a day away. The dwarves allow them to dock and they were directed to Belgar’s shop. Unfortunately, he was no in possession of the shaft to the Wand of Orcus, though he was more than happy to show them his other wares and trade with them.

Rune cast a divination, attempting to learn from his god what the best investigative option was. Based on those answers, rather than seek out Keraptis’s mountain, they chose instead to plot a course back to the Rock of Bral to next seek out Seravos the Golden…

*Don’t you hate it when players completely bypass a detailed encounter that had a bunch of cool details that were going to be TOTALLY AWESOME? Of course, I still gave them full XP (except for the follow-up encounter that never happened as a result of short-circuiting the void worm encounter). I’m just glad I didn’t bust my butt painting the miniature that didn’t really get used in this encounter. 😀

I must remember their predilection for polymorph when designing future encounters.